The present exemplary embodiment relates generally to processing an image of a patch panel to estimate a quantity of patch panel ports (e.g., connectors, receptacles, etc.) in the image, a gap dimension between the ports, and a port dimension. The exemplary embodiment finds particular application in providing the estimated port quantity, estimated gap dimension, and estimated port dimension in electronic form to a label printer to facilitate printing of a patch panel label with identifying information for the corresponding ports. It also finds particular application in merging the image processing capability with a wireless camera device (e.g., smartphone, tablet, etc.). However, it is to be appreciated that the exemplary embodiments described herein are also amenable to other applications, such as merging the image processing capability with a label printer with or without an embedded camera device.
Patch panels are commonly used in data centers to connect remote clients to servers. Patch panels enable huge data throughput efficiently. The data connections at patch panels can be complex because there can be tens of ports (e.g., RJ-45 connectors) at a single patch panel and tens, or even hundreds of patch panels in a data center. Labeling the ports on the patch panels is usually necessary for installation and maintenance of the patch panel and corresponding data connections.
Labeling the ports on the patch panel requires obtaining the number of ports; sizes of the ports, and inter-port distances. A traditional way to achieve this is to use a measuring tape and manually entering the quantity and measurements for a label printer to generate the labels. While this is not a difficult task, doing hundreds or even thousands of labels this way can be tedious and inefficient.